2022-01-06:

Fri:
Took down christmas, the lights too, as the sun came out as I was looking out the window to determine if I should do it today. Yucky later so I got it done at the right time. I just don't like leaving them up because the contacts in the lights rusting is the main thing that does them in. If I can dry them out and keep them that way I think they'll last longer.
Checked sites, videos.
Cleaned the upstairs floor. It was pretty bad, and I'm not saying it's great now, I should really mop the whole thing properly, but at least it's not as bad. Ready for the next kitty quarantine.
Did some FF7, I'm to the last mission.
Went out at 3:00 but the bank closed at 2:00 and hey look at that, so did can kings, so no taking cans back either. I came back home. I'll do the shopping, that, and the bank on Monday after dentist guy.
Went to my parent's house.
Then over to Sean's for games. I helped our team rush to victory in Codenames (Snow fishing indeed) but we all lost at Mysterium.

Sat:
It's a brand new year, I can already feel it's going to be a great one.
...And it's gone. Well, better luck next time.
Got up fairly late.
Took care of tax stuff, sending them money though it's more than likely I'll get it back and more when we do taxes this year. Hey, another thing to look forward to!
Did other end of year things like move the calendar and put in my electric usage which of course is more an end of month thing ugh I have to do paperwork again. Not many of course, it's just another thing to have to do in the future.
More FF7. Got to the end. Need a different strategy for the last guys or maybe just some sleep? It was pretty late. I mean it's a Final Fantasy game, I should expect the end boss to have six different forms but it just seems like if the three ghost things I'm fighting are going to combine into one dragon creature and then I beat that dragon creature up, they should have taken at least some damage.

Sun:
Beat FF7. I reorganized my materia, which seems odd to me, like you need a certain loadout to beat the game? Why can't I beat the game my way, or use no materia at all for a greater challenge? Winning or losing the game should come down to my personal skill not what equipment I happen to have at the moment. But that's pretty tricky game design I admit. I don't know, the AI in that game is fairly wonky at the best of times. I've looked over and seen my so called party members just standing there. Not attacking or defending, just standing there. I have to manually take them over, rush them towards somebody, start attacking, then switch back to the person I actually want to control to keep doing what I was doing. I want to control them, yes, but not micro-manage them. There's a difference. That whole "programming" thing in that one FF game was a bit odd, but at least I could be assured if my companions were not doing the right thing that was on me, not the game engine just making them stand there like a lump.
Did sunday stuff, the usual like watering plants.
Started FF7 Yuffie. Am I doing something wrong? I'm dying way too easily, and she's a fairly high level and starts with various materia. I've talked about games killing you in the first battle never being a good sign, this doesn't seem like a good sign. Maybe I'll research what I'm "supposed" to be doing with her.
Got ready for tomorrow.
Lots of snow today, you missed it by about a week there mother nature.

Mon:
Cleaned the driveway, I needed to get out and do stuff.
Sites and videos.
By then it was 10:30. I didn't have to leave until 11:10. What do I do for 40 minutes, I asked myself. An 11:30 appointment doesn't exactly ruin the entire day, but it comes close! Then I realized, there was a thing I needed to do separated from all other places and times. Taking my cans back. So I did that. They've changed the operation down there a bit. Someone comes out to you and takes the cans inside and then brings you the money out. Rather than dumping the cans and them being sorted right in front of you. Seems more efficient, they brought me my $8.00 right away. They also moved into the back, probably for more room as it looks like they have a whole building now so while I have no idea how they actually make their money, I'm glad they are because doing that manually myself would be less than ideal. So that's done for a year or more.
Then out to Dentist Guy. Time used wisely. He wasn't too bad, I moved his 186 MB off his computer onto the two flash drives, did a bit more tutoring, and that was that.
Went to good will, got a new coat as mine has a zipper problem that can't be fixed. Also found some things for this year's game, and debated getting the first 1-6 seasons of Game of Thrones and Farscape on DVD. The one series I have digitally thanks to Sean, and the other... I don't know, do I want to get into that series?
Then shopping and the bank. No troubles there.
Back here, more FF7, of course. At least I'm raising Materia quickly. I figured out I can easily slaughter the small group of mice, and the smaller group of, uh, tubes with mouths go down fast and with some difficulty take out the stupid pair of dogs that are always jumping on me and pinning me down. The one solitary dog at the start? Just avoid him, he's not worth it, and way harder than the others for some reason. (I was basing my opinion on him, and realized, oh, he's some kind of super dog and the other "normal" enemies are just that, normal enimies.) The others respawn every few minutes so I can easily run in a circle, take them all out, leave the area to rest, and repeat. With the double growth armor and the double growth linked materea on top of that I could get things like HP up materia leveled up quite quickly so I grinded for like two hours. 50 AP per run or more will do that. I'm feeling a bit better about it.
One call, made that he just had his email filtered as far as I can tell.
And then some back 4 blood, which I watched a video on and now understand exactly how technically inferior it is to the predecessor. There are just so many more details they packed into the older games that are not present in "next generation" it makes one wonder (this one if you were wondering) why we have more CPU cycles to play with at all? We started over with Act 2 for reasons, rather than finishing the final level after dying once. Maybe the experience we gain will help later?

Tues:
Back to work, and what a joy it is.
Went back to looking at the DMP machine to try and get it working with email encryption and signing.
I like the new jacket, works well. I had my older jacket which I tried to use when doing the driveway but realized it had the same problem. Makes me think there's a market for coats with easily replaced zippers. As that seems to be the point of failure for them.
The afternoon was spent fighting with the thing, finally got it working after realizing the time was wrong (I think it was getting reset by the firey unit despite no setting telling it to do that?) and I missed one "cactest.lab" in a field somewhere and you know it hates that! So it seemed to work, the email sent, but... didn't. I didn't get it on the other end. What? It was working, when I changed the login I got an error, so the server seemed to be taking the email just fine, but not delivering it to my inbox. Super! Maybe the server needs to be rebooted after the long weekend? I don't know, we'll fight with it some more tomorrow I guess. I was too late to get any advice from the others because they all knock off early.
And I have more Don nonsense with trays to look forward to tomorrow, so that's a thing.

Came back here, checked sites, ate dinner. No calls, but did more gaming with the others.

Wed:
Frontier offers fiber? And their lowest tier is 30mb/sec? Sheesh. Their next to fastest is 500mb/sec so you know it's going to cost you an arm and a leg. Anyway, congrats frontier for offering something in my area I've had for, what? Three years now? Longer?
Well, the exchange thing turned out to be that problem I briefly read about and dismissed about an INT being used to store a date used by the malware engine in exchange which was overflowing, why is it even doing it in that weird way? It's so bizarre. Anyway, it was crashing the thing, and so no mail was being delivered. Neat! Thanks MS, you're a peach as always, making more problems for us with your shoddy programming. Turned off the malware engine and got the mail in. 3 of the 4 cards were fine, but the last one I couldn't decrypt the mail. Odd. I could from the previous test, so I know it's not the card or the certs. Maybe an outlook issue? Probably an outlook issue? So spent some time wondering what that could be about. Also did more tray nonsense with Don, but it looks like it's over for now.
Came back here, one call, and Ellen from yesterday. We may do more gaming tonight but I'll have to start later so I can call her back, I promised her I would and she wants 8:00 because I operate on her schedule and not my own!

Sites and dinner of course.

Called the guy with the lenovo. Predictably, it's stuck on the logo again. I told him to tilt it. He's calling them tomorrow. I also called Ellen, for her pictures folder for the 3 or 4th time.

Then some warframe with the others.

Thurs:
Much of the day was spent trying the cards out on various machines to get to the bottom of the email issue. Turns out it's the card, or the certs on the card, anyway. Even the altalink machines can't work with it if you send as a certain type of encryption. Crazy. But at least we know it's not that machine or the plug ins so that task is finally behind us. The next nearest task will be, uh, next month or so I guess?
Had the usual meetings, because it's Thursday and we have to have many meetings.
Checked the plants, and that was that.

Came back here. Had dinner, checked sites, one phone call. Lonovo man again, ugh, I think I may have moved his stuff from the old drive rather than just copying it. I can't be sure. If he sends it back maybe he has nothing. Great. I'll have to go over there again and make sure. Unless he's getting the replacement first? He wasn't clear on that. I haven't talked to him yet.

He's getting the replacement first. That's good, I can copy his stuff off of that. If it boots, anyway. I suppose even if it doesn't I could take it apart. I guess.

Looking to the future, the usual stuff tomorrow like shopping and seeing my parents. We'll do the miracle game after that.
Then the monster game on Saturday, aw so sad I won't be able to see Ellen. Not at the time she wanted, anyway.
Nothing for Sunday yet.

Oh yeah, what I made for everyone this year. I can show you now.

Sean's was a character from the game he liked that no longer exists because they shut the servers down


Mizzy got a collectable from Warframe you can find, though I think I've only ever seen one.

This was later cleaned up more, I should have gotten a better picture of the final thing.

And Neil got the wand from the Miracle game that his character uses.


So there you go. Time to start thinking about next year.

Doing some FF7 of course. Stuck trying to break boxes. They have broken me.

Anyway, hope your Jan 2022 is off to a good start, I'll see you back here next week.